Intentional Stance Research Articles

Fiscal Policy in Real Time

In this paper we argue that any assessment on the intentional stance of fiscal policy should be based upon all the information available to policymakers at the time of fiscal planning. In particular, real-time data on the discretionary fiscal policy “instrument”, the structural primary balance, should be used in the estimation of fiscal policy reaction functions. In fact, the ex-post realization of discretionary fiscal measures may end up to be drastically different from what intentionally planned by fiscal authorities in the budget law. If this is the case, and if revision errors in the policy indicator are correlated with the ones in the regressors, it is shown that commonly used estimators become biased possibly inducing a misleading judgement on the policy stance. We derive the functional form of that bias and, based on empirical second-order moments, we are able to accurately predict the potential impact of using revised data in the evaluation of the ex-ante stance of fiscal policy. When fiscal policy rules are estimated on real-time data, our results indicate a counter-cyclical stance in OECD countries, especially during economic expansions. This contrasts with conventional findings based on revised data, which point to fiscal policy acyclicality or pro-cyclicality, and with Forni and Momigliano (2005) who employ real-time data for the output gap and find countercyclicality, but just in recessions. Further, we test whether threshold effects might be at play in the reaction of fiscal policy to the economic cycle and to debt accumulation. It emerges that the intentional cyclical behavior of fiscal policy is characterized by two regimes, and that the switch between them is likely to occur when output is close to its equilibrium level. On the other hand, the use of revised data does not allow to identify any threshold effect.

Detecting agency from the biological motion of veridical vs animated agents.

The ability to detect agency is fundamental for understanding the social world. Underlying this capacity are neural circuits that respond to patterns of intentional biological motion in the superior temporal sulcus and temporoparietal junction. Here we show that the brain's blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) response to such motion is modulated by the representation of the actor. Dynamic social interactions were portrayed by either live-action agents or computer-animated agents, enacting the exact same patterns of biological motion. Using an event-related design, we found that the BOLD response associated with the perception and interpretation of agency was greater when identical physical movements were performed by real rather than animated agents. This finding has important implications for previous work on biological motion that has relied upon computer-animated stimuli and demonstrates that the neural substrates of social perception are finely tuned toward real-world agents. In addition, the response in lateral temporal areas was observed in the absence of instructions to make mental inferences, thus demonstrating the spontaneous implementation of the intentional stance.

Repressed Contents Reconsidered:Repressed Contents and Dennett’s Intentional Stance Approach

The conventional view presented in terms of repressed contents brought to consciousness (a ‘realistic view’ of repressed contents) is seen as untenable because the existence of repressed contents cannot be pinpointed. An instrumentalist view of the nature of repressed contents is sketched, and Dennett’s intentional stance approach is applied to the issue of repressed contents. As opposed to realistic view, it is suggested that becoming conscious of repressed contents should be seen as forming new contents of consciousness. However, it is seen as plausible to project unconscious contents into the mind in an instrumentalist manner. An instrumentalist view is suggested to avoid ontological problems concerning repressed contents.

Actors and actions: The role of agent behavior in infants’ attribution of goals

Twelve-month-old infants attribute goals to both familiar, human agents and unfamiliar, non-human agents. They also attribute goal-directedness to both familiar actions and unfamiliar ones. Four conditions examined information 12-month-olds use to determine which actions of an unfamiliar agent are goal-directed. Infants who witnessed the agent interact contingently with a human confederate encoded the agent's actions as goal-directed; infants who saw a human confederate model an intentional stance toward the agent without the agent's participation, did not. Infants who witnessed the agent align itself with one of two potential targets before approaching that target encoded the approach as goal-directed; infants who did not observe the self-alignment did not encode the approach as goal-directed. A possible common underpinning of these two seemingly independent sources of information is discussed.

Fiscal Policy in Real Time

In this paper we argue that any assessment on the intentional stance of fiscal policy should be based upon all the information available to policymakers at the time of fiscal planning. In particular, real-time data on the discretionary fiscal policy instrument, the structural primary balance, should be used in the estimation of fiscal policy reaction functions. In fact, the ex-post realization of discretionary fiscal measures may end up to be drastically different from what intentionally planned by fiscal authorities in the budget law. If this is the case, and if revision errors in the policy indicator are correlated with the ones in the regressors, it is shown that commonly used estimators become biased possibly inducing a misleading judgement on the policy stance. We derive the functional form of that bias and, based on empirical second-order moments, we are able to accurately predict the potential impact of using revised data in the evaluation of the ex-ante stance of fiscal policy. When fiscal policy rules are estimated on real-time data, our results indicate a counter-cyclical stance in OECD countries, especially during economic expansions. This contrasts with conventional findings based on revised data, which point to fiscal policy acyclicality or pro-cyclicality, and with Forni and Momigliano (2005) who employ real-time data for the output gap and find countercyclicality, but just in recessions. Further, we test whether threshold effects might be at play in the reaction of fiscal policy to the economic cycle and to debt accumulation. It emerges that the intentional cyclical behavior of fiscal policy is characterized by two regimes, and that the switch between them is likely to occur when output is close to its equilibrium level. On the other hand, the use of revised data does not allow to identify any threshold effect.

An intentional stance modulates the integration of gesture and speech during comprehension

The present study investigates whether knowledge about the intentional relationship between gesture and speech influences controlled processes when integrating the two modalities at comprehension. Thirty-five adults watched short videos of gesture and speech that conveyed semantically congruous and incongruous information. In half of the videos, participants were told that the two modalities were intentionally coupled (i.e., produced by the same communicator), and in the other half, they were told that the two modalities were not intentionally coupled (i.e., produced by different communicators). When participants knew that the same communicator produced the speech and gesture, there was a larger bi-lateral frontal and central N400 effect to words that were semantically incongruous versus congruous with gesture. However, when participants knew that different communicators produced the speech and gesture—that is, when gesture and speech were not intentionally meant to go together—the N400 effect was present only in right-hemisphere frontal regions. The results demonstrate that pragmatic knowledge about the intentional relationship between gesture and speech modulates controlled neural processes during the integration of the two modalities.

Italo Svevo and Charlie Chaplin: Dramatic Irony and the Psychoanalytic Stance

The article takes off from a revealing slip in an article about Italo Svevo's novel, Zeno's Conscience, in which the Italian critic, Massimo Verdicchio, attempts to show that the novel is fundamentally philosophical, not psychoanalytic. In doing so, he misreads Svevo's indebtedness to Charcot as a debt to Charlie Chaplin's character Charlot. But when are we justified in calling such a misreading a Freudian slip? Can one legitimately claim to have insight into the workings of a literary critic one has never met? Invoking Daniel Dennet's notion of the "intentional stance," as well as the inherently intersubjective notion of dramatic irony, the author argues that there are times, clearly definable, in which one is obliged to adopt a "psychoanalytic stance," and both Verdicchio's article and Svevo's novel present such an occasion. Although the name of Svevo's protagonist links him to the ancient philosopher, Zeno of Elea, known for his paradoxes, he is likewise a "stranger to himself," and thus a quintessentially psychoanalytic subject.

Three-Dimensional Power: A Discussion of Steven Lukes' Power: A Radical View

Lukes' third dimension of power exists where people are subject to domination and acquiesce in that domination. The intentional stance allows us to predict and explain others' behaviour in ways that those agents may not recognise. It denies agents' privileged access to their own reasons for actions. Using the intentional stance we can understand how agents may acquiesce in their own domination. We can also make distinctions between those who dominate knowingly and those who dominate without realising they do so. It allows us to distinguish morally such cases and to understand the power structure without falling into the Foucaultian trap of seeing all social relationships in the same relativistic light and where all – dominant and dominated alike – are subject to the same power relations and moral responsibility.

“Einstein's baby” could infer intentionality

Some implications of Tomasello et al.'s theory derive from incorporating a variant of a common assumption that humans are biologically adapted to take an intentional stance in relation to conspecifics. I argue that, rather than being cued, intentions and other dispositional states may be inferred logically from an evolved commitment to determinism and evidence of state-dependent behavior.

Theory of mind

Theory of mind

Taking an “intentional stance” on eye-gaze shifts: A functional neuroimaging study of social perception in children

During middle childhood, children develop an increasing understanding of intentions and other social information conveyed through dynamic facial cues such as changes in eye-gaze direction. Recent work in our laboratory has focused on using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in adults to map the neural circuitry subserving the visual analysis of others' actions and the intentions underlying these actions. In these studies, the superior temporal sulcus (STS) region has been continually implicated in processing shifts in eye gaze. Further, these studies have indicated that STS activity is modulated by the context within which eye-gaze shifts occur, suggesting that this region is involved in social perception via its role in the analysis of the intentions of observed actions. Still, no studies have investigated the neural circuitry supporting eye-gaze processing in children. We used event-related fMRI to examine brain activity in 7- to 10-year-old healthy children observing an animated virtual actor who shifted her eyes towards either a target object or empty space. Consistent with prior studies in adults, the STS, middle temporal gyrus, and inferior parietal lobule were sensitive to the intentions underlying the stimulus character's eye movements. These findings suggest that the neural circuitry underlying the processing of eye gaze and the detection of intentions conveyed through shifts in eye gaze in children are similar to that found previously in adults. We discuss these findings and potential implications for mapping the neurodevelopment of the social cognition and social perception abnormalities characteristic of autism.

Mobile agents for mobile tourists: a user evaluation of Gulliver's Genie

How mobile computing applications and services may be best designed, implemented and deployed remains the subject of much research. One alternative approach to developing software for mobile users that is receiving increasing attention from the research community is that of one based on intelligent agents. Recent advances in mobile computing technology have made such an approach feasible. We present an overview of the design and implementation of an archetypical mobile computing application, namely that of an electronic tourist guide. This guide is unique in that it comprises a suite of intelligent agents that conform to the strong intentional stance. However, the focus of this paper is primarily concerned with the results of detailed user evaluations conducted on this system. Within the literature, comprehensive evaluations of mobile context-sensitive systems are sparse and therefore, this paper seeks, in part, to address this deficiency.

Infants' understanding of object-directed action

When and in what ways do infants recognize humans as intentional actors? An important aspect of this larger question concerns when infants recognize specific human actions (e.g. a reach) as object-directed (i.e. as acting toward goal-objects). In two studies using a visual habituation technique, 12-month-old infants were tested to assess their recognition that an adult's reach is directed toward its target object. Infants in the experimental condition were habituated to a display in which an actor reached over a wall-like barrier with an arcing arm movement, to pick up a ball. After habituation infants saw two test displays, for which the barrier was removed. In the direct test event the actor reached directly for the ball, the arm tracing a visually new path, but the action consistent with attempting to reach for the object as directly as possible. In the indirect test event the actor traced the old path, reaching over in an arc, even though the wall was no longer present. This arm movement was identical to that in habituation but no longer displayed a reach going directly to its object. In a control condition infants saw the same movements but in a situation with no goal-object. In the experimental conditions, with a goal object present, infants looked longer at the indirect test event in comparison to the direct test event. In the control conditions infants looked equally at both indirect and direct test events. We conclude that sensitivity to human object-directed action is established by 12-month-olds and compare these results to recent findings by [Gergely, G., Nadasdy, Z., Csibra, G., & Biro S. (1995). Taking the intentional stance at 12 months of age. Cognition, 56, 165–193] and [Woodward, A. (1998). Infants selectively encode the goal object of an actor's reach. Cognition, 69, 1–34].

Dennett, Darwin, and Skinner Crows

The central theme of this paper is the scientific viewpoint taken for understanding behavioral processes. Two classical viewpoints are formulated by Dennett (the intentional stance) and Tinbergen (Tinbergen's four questions). In this paper we argue that the two different viewpoints are linked to the two different processes that underlie complex behavior, namely, the instruction process and the selection process. To zoom in on the similarities and differences between these processes, we model whelk dropping behavior of Northwestern crows as observed by Zach (1978, 1979) from the two different viewpoints: (1) with crows that possess intentional faculties (called Dennett crows), and (2) with crows that possess selectional faculties. The latter type of crows is further divided into a population that is able to adapt over generations only by natural selection (Darwin crows), and a population that, apart from natural selection, is also able to adapt using operant learning (Skinner crows). Salient outcomes are that these two populations need markedly different times to adapt to changes in the environment, and that operant learning needs a value system that is an internal equivalent of the fitness criterion. In conclusion, we propose that understanding behavior should start at a meta-level with identifying whether the nature of the behavioral process under study is intentional or selectional.

L’intentionnalité et le virtuel

Intentionality and the virtual. After recalling how we define the virtual (which is not real but clearly displays the full qualities of the real, in a plainly actual – i. e. not potential – way), we explain why the “ artificial agents” that are appearing in every part of the world of computers should be conceived as virtual agents, why attributing intentionality to them is not a matter of choice, contrary to what Dennett’s “ intentional stance” suggests, and why such intentionality should be called virtual. As a result, the cognitive sciences project of “ naturalizing” intentionality faces a new challenge.

Neural Correlates of Detecting Pretense: Automatic Engagement of the Intentional Stance under Covert Conditions

Typically developing children begin to produce and understand pretend play between 18 and 24 months of age, and early pretense has been argued to be a candidate ''core'' capacity central to the deployment of representations of other peoples' mental states-''theory of mind.'' In a functional magnetic resonance imaging study, 16 healthy adult volunteers were imaged while watching short (5 sec) clips of actors who either performed simple everyday actions or pretended to perform a similar set of actions, under covert conditions (e. g., participants were not directed to attend to actors' mental states). There was increased activity in the medial prefrontal areas (Brodmann's areas [BA] 9/6/32, 9, and 10), inferior frontal gyrus bilaterally (BA 44, 47), temporo-parietal regions (BA 21 and 22), and parahippocampal areas, including the amygdala, when subjects viewed pretend actions as compared with real actions. This result suggests that at least some areas previously implicated in making explicit mental state judgments are also strongly activated in response to actions that call for mental state interpretation (e. g., pretense) even when there is no explicit instruction for ''mind reading.'' This outcome is discussed in terms of accounts that propose ''theory of mind'' to be underwritten by automatic specialized mechanisms for the interpretation of the behavior of social agents.

Romantic Systematics and the Genealogy of Thought: The Formal Roots of a Cognitive History of Images

Romantic Systematics and the Genealogy of Thought:The Formal Roots of a Cognitive History of Images Barbara Maria Stafford (bio) Across the arts, theory of design, and new media studies a history of the senses is springing up.1 Simultaneously, the multiplying brain sciences are developing a finer neurobiology of feeling.2 Yet, not since the Romantics has there been such Kierkegaardian urgency in determining the place of the singular being within a heterogeneous and indifferent universe. We are warned that the concept of the "person" is in deep philosophical trouble,3 and that the nature of "personhood" needs to be questioned in relation to neurochemical and other invasions of the body. Extravagant claims of intimate detection, especially, surround neuroimaging techniques (PET, fMRI, near-infrared spectroscopy). While reminiscent of nineteenth-century claustral phrenology, today's high-tech version asserts the inescapable link between minute brain-activation patterns and highly individuated personality traits like risk aversion, guilt, pessimism, persistence, and empathy.4 The rise of a biocultures [End Page 315] paradigm5 and, in academic circles, the "eclipse" of a politics of identity or the politics of recognition6 are yet another sign of the perceived problem of intersubject and subject-world incommensurability. Still absent from these various concerns about the contemporary situation of the individual is a combined story of the emergence of subjectivity.7 We have yet to formulate a soma-poetics of human interiority, or what Thomas Metzinger calls "a truly internalist state space semantics."8 This essay offers a glimpse into a possible new kind of image history, one that intertwines the aesthetic with the neurobiologic. Integrating a cognitive perspective into humanistic inquiry allows us both to imagine and to construct an alternative framework for representation-as-presentation—that is, for the creation of a public object-event that existentially expresses a private inward performance. How might humanists studying images contribute to this bridging project? In the remainder of this essay, I suggest that formalism—the recognition that embodied structure is a powerful signifier—is a major area ripe for reevaluation in light of the current revolution in brain studies. If human consciousness involves an "intentional stance," as Daniel Dennett proposes,9 then the embeddedness of thinking animals in environments both natural and social allows them to figure out practically, or to materially form-ulate, what to do. This phenomenological activity—whereby the internal shaping of the self is externalized in graphic, gestural, and kinematic expressions—is a useful corrective to those computational branches of contemporary neuroscience (of which Dennett is a key representative) heavily indebted both to linguistics and to analytical philosophy. The performative process of creation suggests, on the contrary, that we can think without using words. I propose that exploring this deep corporeal capacity for forming moving images or, even deeper, neural patterns—using the elementary [End Page 316] representational tools of the sensory and motor systems—entails the creation of a neuronal aesthetics.10 Yet we lack a mutually informed cross-disciplinary inquiry into the complexities of human behavior from the inside out. One obstacle to establishing this innovative field of relationships is the deep rift currently separating the humanities and social sciences, under the sway of a contrastive "cultural turn,"11 from the physical and biological sciences, which are intent on uncovering innate human responses. An additional task, then, is innovative intermixture: finding ways to reinsert the biological into the investigation of cultural practices, as well as inserting evidence from past states-of-mind into contemporary cognitive research. In the process of opening up the scientific "theater of consciousness" to the social and cultural study of images, I specifically want to close the tenacious modernist gap between form and function. There is a distinguished pedigree for such an elision stretching back to late eighteenth-century attempts at characterizing a semio-translational universe perfused with signs. Recall that figuring out an object afresh over and over again—that is, repeated concept re-formation—was central to the Critique of Judgment intent on bridging the sensible and supersensible domains. From Plato to Kant, "structure is something we rejoice about."12 While I provide new interpretations of schematic compositions, from William Hogarth to Thomas Struth...

Beyond the Marketing Philosophy: Context and Intention in the Explanation of Consumer Choice

The intentional stance and the contextual stance are inextricably interdependent in the production of acomprehensive explanation and means of predicting complex human behaviour. This is illustrated in the context of the expectation of attitudinal-behavioural consistency which has long lain at the heart of both marketing science and social psychology. In practice, cognitively-inclined attitude theory and research leans on the contextual stance in order to formulate the heuristic overlay of mental interpretation in which it primarily presents its predictive and explicative accounts of behaviour. Behaviour analysis has traditionally eschewed this approach, maintaining that it can generate an exclusively extensional accountof complex behaviour. It is argued that while the cognitive and behaviour analytic approaches produce equally effective predictions of behaviour, an adequate explanation of human activity requires the addition of the kind of interpretive overlay advocated by Dennett in which the relationship between extensional science and intensionalistic interpretation is clarified. The resulting framework of analysis, intentional behaviorism provides an inclusive paradigm.

Sharing attention and pointing to objects at 12 months: is the intentional stance implied?

The goal of the present research was to assess whether communicative gestures, such as gazing and declarative pointing of 12-month-old infants indicate that infants perceive people as intentional agents, or whether infant communicative behaviors are merely triggered by specific perceptual cues in joint visual attention situations. Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, thirty-two 12-month-olds were conditioned to follow the gaze of a contingently interacting person or object. They were then submitted to a paradigm designed to incite them to initiate communicative gestures to the person or object. The temporal coordination between pointing, gazing, and vocalizations occurred at a significantly higher rate in the Person than in the Object condition. In Experiment 2, the effect of the attentional focus of others on the gaze, points and vocalizations of thirty 12-month-olds was investigated. Infants were assessed in conditions where the experimenter vocalized while looking at the same (In-focus), or a different (Out-of-focus) toy than the infants. Infants who pointed produced more co-occurrences of gaze, vocalizations and points in the Out-of-focus condition than in the In-focus condition. Thus, by 12 months, infants are aware of the attentional state of the person. Discussion centers on the implications of these findings for theories of social and cognitive knowing.

Effects of echoic mimicry using hummed sounds on human–computer interaction

Our research goal is to investigate interpersonal relations involving empathy in human–computer interaction. We focus on mimicry behavior and its ability to elicit intentional stance of a partner in interaction. In this study, we conducted a psychological experiment to examine how prosodic mimicry by computers affects people. An interactive system in this experiment uses an animated character that mimics the prosodic features in a human’s voice echoicly by synthesizing the hummed sounds. The sounds consist only of prosodic components similar to continuous humming of the open vowel /a/ or /o/ without any language information. The subjects completed a questionnaire to evaluate the character at different mimicry ratio. The results indicated the following possibilities: First, people favorably interpret a computer’s simple response such as echoic mimicry using hummed sounds mixed with a slightly constant prosody response. Second, people may establish an interpersonal relations with a computer through such facilitated interaction.